More cameras at substations – that’s the first demand after the attacks on the power grid in NRW and Brandenburg.
NRW Interior Minister Herbert Reul says we’ve gotten too cautious about data protection.
Our CEO Mirko Ross disagrees in his interview with the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger.
His first point: you can’t put a camera on every substation, every cable duct, every distribution box. Critical infrastructure is simply too big and too spread out for that. What actually worked in Bergheim: when the substation went down, other parts of the grid absorbed the outage. That’s where the investment should go – into resilience, not more surveillance.
“If a component like a substation fails, that has to be compensated for immediately by others,” Ross says.
His second point tends to get lost in the current debate: the real problem sits with the security agencies themselves.
Police, domestic intelligence offices, and intelligence services barely share information across state lines. Each state runs its own IT system, and data has to be converted multiple times before it even arrives.
“We need to tear down these barriers and improve the flow of information, and make sure data doesn’t have to be converted five times over,”
On top of that come some pretty mundane problems: chronic understaffing, and budgets that only get released after the state budget is passed.
If an agency needs to react fast to a fast-moving threat but has to wait on a budget decision first, that’s a structural problem, not a technical one.
Germany is dead last in Europe when it comes to data sharing between security agencies, Ross says. And attacks on our infrastructure aren’t slowing down.
Full interview here: https://www.ksta.de/politik/nrw-politik/sicherheitsexperte-mehr-kameras-sind-keine-loesung-1365099
Konrad Buck
Head of Press and Media Relations
Background & Expert Access for Media
- Product & technology insights – technical context, solution architecture, and real-world use cases for professional and trade media
- Expert commentary & background talks – our CEO is available as an expert source on current cybersecurity developments, threat landscapes, and the impact of AI on security and regulation
I speak openly, fact-based, and without PR spin. I am a former IT journalist with decades of experience in the IT and cybersecurity space, familiar with the highs and lows of the industry. Off-the-record discussions are possible upon request.
